Operation: Outer Space

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Before sunset, they reached the area of ashes where the ship had stood.Cochrane was sure that if anybody else had been left behind besidesthemselves, the landing-place was an inevitable rendezvous. Only threemembers of the ship's company had been inside when Babs and Cochraneleft to stroll for the two hours astronomers on Earth had set as awaiting-period. Jones had been in the ship, and Holden, and AliciaSimms. Everybody else had been exploring. Their attitude had beenexactly that of sight-seers and tourists. But they could have gottenback before the take-off.

  Apparently they had. Nobody seemed to have returned to the burned-overspace since the ship's departure. The blast of the rockets had erasedall previous tracks, but still there was a thin layer of ash resettledover the clearing. Footprints would have been visible in it. Anybodyremaining would have come here. Nobody had. Babs and Cochrane were leftalone.

  There were still temblors, but the sharper shocks no longer came. Therewas conflagration in the wood, where the lurching ship had left a longfresh streak of forest-fire. The two castaways stared at the round,empty landing-place. Overhead, the blue sky turned yellow--but where thesmoke from the eruption rose, the sky early became a brownish red--andpresently the yellow faded to gold. Unburned green foliage all about wassingularly beautiful in that golden glow. But it was more beautifulstill as the sky turned rose-pink and then carmine in turn, and thencrimson from one horizon to the other save where the volcanicsmoke-cloud marred the color. Then the east darkened, and became a redso deep as to be practically black, and unfamiliar bright stars began topeep through it.

  Before darkness was complete, Cochrane dragged burning branches from theedge of the new fire--the heat was searing--and built a new and smallerfire in the place where the ship had been.

  "This isn't for warmth," he explained briefly, "but so we'll have lightif we need it. And it isn't likely that animals will be anything butafraid of it."

  He went off to drag charred masses of burnable stuff from the burned-outfirst forest fire. He built a sort of rampart in the very center of theclearing. He brought great heaps of scorched wood. He did not know howmuch was needed to keep the fire going until dawn.

  When he finished, Babs was silently at work trying to find out how tokeep the fire going. The burning parts had to be kept together. Onebranch, burning alone, died out. Two red-hot brands in contact kept eachother alight.

  "I'm sorry we haven't anything to eat," Cochrane told her.

  "I'm not hungry," she assured him. "What are we going to do now?"

  "There's nothing to do until morning." Unconsciously, Cochrane lookedgrim. "Then there'll be plenty. Food, for one thing. We don't know,actually, whether or not there's anything really edible on thisplanet--for us. It could be that there are fruits or possibly stalks orleaves that would be nourishing. Only--we don't know which is which. Wehave to be careful. We might pick something like poison ivy!"

  Babs said:

  "But the ship will come back!"

  "Of course," agreed Cochrane. "But it may take them some time to findus. This is a pretty big planet, you know."

  He estimated his supply of burnable stuff. He improved the rampart hehad made at first. Babs stared at him. After four or five minutes hestepped back.

  "You can lean against this," he explained. "You can watch the fire quitecomfortably. And it's a sort of wall. The fire will light one side ofyou and the wall will feel comforting behind you when you get sleepy."

  Babs nodded. She swallowed.

  "I--think I see what you mean when you say they may have trouble findingus, because this planet is so large."

  Cochrane nodded reluctantly.

  "Of course there's this burned-off space for a marker," he observedcheerfully. "But it could take several days for them to see it."

  Babs swallowed again. She said carefully:

  "The--ship can't hover like a helicopter, to search. You said so. Itdoesn't have fuel enough. They can't really search for us at all! Theonly way to make a real search would be to go back to Earth and--bringback helicopters and fuel for them and men to fly them.... Isn't thatright?"

  "Not necessarily. But we do have to figure on a matter of--well--two orthree days as a possibility."

  Babs moistened her lips and he said quickly:

  "I did a show once about some miners lost in a wilderness. A periodshow. In it, they knew that part of their food was poisoned. They didn'tknow what. They had to have all their food. And of course they didn'thave laboratories with which to test for poison."

  Babs eyed him oddly.

  "They bandaged their arms," said Cochrane, "and put scraps of thedifferent foodstuffs under the bandages. The one that was poisonousshowed. It affected the skin. Like an allergy-test. I'll try that trickin the morning when there's light to pick samples by. There are berriesand stuff. There must be fruits. A few hours should test them."

  Babs said without intonation:

  "And we can watch what the animals eat."

  Cochrane nodded gravely. Animals on Earth can live on things that--toput it mildly--humans do not find satisfying. Grass, for example. But itwas good for Babs to think of cheering things right now. There would beplenty of discouragement to contemplate later.

  There was a flicker of brightness in the sky. Presently the earthquivered. Something made a plaintive, "_waa-waa-waaaaa!_" sound off inthe night. Something else made a noise like the tinkling of bells. Therewas an abstracted hooting presently, which now was nearby and now wasfar away, and once they heard something which was exactly like the noiseof water running into a pool. But the source of that particular burblingmoved through the dark wood beyond the clearing.

  It was not wholly dark where they were, even aside from their own smallfire. The burning trees in the departing ship's rocket-trail sent up acolumn of white which remaining flames illuminated. The remarkablyprimitive camp Cochrane had made looked like a camp on a tinysnow-field, because of the ashes.

  "We've got to think about shelter," said Babs presently, very quietlyindeed. "If there are glaciers, there must be winter here. If there iswinter, we have to find out which animals we can eat, and how to storethem."

  "Hold on!" protested Cochrane. "That's looking too far ahead!"

  Babs clasped her hands together. It could have been to keep theirtrembling from being seen. Cochrane was regarding her face. She keptthat under admirable control.

  "Is it?" asked Babs. "On the broadcast Mr. Jamison said that there wasas much land here as on all the continent of Asia. Maybe he exaggerated.Say there's only as much land not ice-covered as there is in SouthAmerica. It's all forest and plain and--uninhabited." She moistened herlips, but her voice was very steady. "If all of South America wasuninhabited, and there were two people lost in it, and nobody knew wherethey were--how long would it take to find them?"

  "It would be a matter of luck," admitted Cochrane.

  "If the ship comes back, it can't hover to look for us. There isn't fuelenough. It couldn't spot us from space if it went in an orbit like aspace platform. By the time they could get help--they wouldn't even besure we were alive. If we can't count on being found right away, thisburned-over place will be green again. In two or three weeks theycouldn't find it anyhow."

  Cochrane fidgeted. He had worked out all this for himself. He'd beendisturbed at having to tell it, or even admit it to Babs. Now she saidin a constrained voice:

  "If men came to this planet and built a city and hunted for us, it mightstill be a hundred years before anybody happened to come into thisvalley. Looking for us would be worse than looking for a needle in ahaystack. I don't think we're going to be found again."

  Cochrane was silent. He felt guiltily relieved that he did not have tobreak this news to Babs. Most men have an instinctive feeling that awoman will blame them for bad news they hear.

  A long time later, Babs said as quietly as before:

  "Johnny Simms asked me to come along while he went hunting. I didn't. Atleast I--I'm not cast away with him!"


  Cochrane said gruffly:

  "Don't sit there and brood! Try to get some sleep."

  She nodded. After a long while, her head drooped. She jerked awakeagain. Cochrane ordered her vexedly to make herself comfortable. Shestretched out beside the wall of wood that Cochrane had made. She saidquietly:

  "While we're looking for food tomorrow morning, we'd better keep oureyes open for a place to build a house."

  She closed her eyes.

  Cochrane kept watch through the dark hours. He heard night-cries in theforest, and once toward dawn the distant volcano seemed to undergo afresh paroxysm of activity. Boomings and explosions rumbled in thenight. There were flickerings in the sky. But there were fewer temblorsafter it, and no shocks at all.

  More than once, Cochrane found himself dozing. It was difficult to stayin a state of alarm. There was but one single outcry in the forest thatsounded like the shriek of a creature seized by a carnivore. That wasnot nearby. He tried to make plans. He felt bitterly self-reproachfulthat he knew so few of the things that would be useful to a castaway.But he had been a city man all his life. Woodcraft was not only out ofhis experience--on overcrowded Earth it would have been completelyuseless.

  From time to time he found himself thinking, instead of practicalmatters, of the astonishing sturdiness of spirit Babs displayed.

  When she waked, well after daybreak, and sat up blinking, he said:

  "Er--Babs. We're in this together. From now on, if you want to tell mesomething for my own good, go ahead! Right?"

  She rubbed her eyes on her knuckles and said,

  "I'd have done that anyhow. For both our good. Don't you think we'dbetter try to find a place where we can get a drink of water? Water hasto be right to drink!"

  They set off, Cochrane carrying the weapon he'd brought from the ship.It was Babs who pointed out that a stream should almost certainly befound where rain would descend, downhill. Babs, too, spotted one of thesmall, foot-high furry bipeds feasting gluttonously on small roundobjects that grew from the base of a small tree instead of on itsbranches. The tree, evidently, depended on four-footed rather than onflying creatures to scatter its seeds. They gathered samples of thefruit. Cochrane peeled a sliver of the meat from one of the roundobjects and put it under his watchstrap.

  They found a stream. They found other fruits, and Cochrane prepared thesame test for them as for the first. One of the samples turned his skinred and angry almost immediately. He discarded it and all the fruits ofthe kind from which it came.

  At midday they tasted the first-gathered fruit. The flesh was red andjuicy. There was a texture it was satisfying to chew on. The taste wasindeterminate save for a very mild flavor of maple and peppermint mixedtogether.

  They had no symptoms of distress afterward. Other fruits were lesssatisfactory. Of the samples which the skin-test said werenon-poisonous, one was acrid and astringent, and two others had no tasteexcept that of greenness--practically the taste of any leaf one mightchew.

  "I suppose," said Cochrane wryly, as they headed back toward theash-clearing at nightfall, "we've got to find out if the animals can beeaten."

  Babs nodded matter-of-factly.

  "Yes. Tonight I'm taking part of the watch. As you remarked thismorning, we're in this together."

  He looked at her sharply, and she flushed.

  "I mean it!" she said doggedly. "I'm watching part of the night!"

  He was desperately tired. His muscles were not yet back to normal afterthe low gravity on the moon. She'd had more rest than he. He had to lether help. But there was embarrassment between them because it looked asif they would have to spend the rest of their lives together, and theyhad not made the decision. It had been made for them. And they had notacknowledged it yet.

  When they reached the clearing, Cochrane began to drag new logs towardthe central place where much of last night's supply of fuel remained.Matter-of-factly, Babs began to haul stuff with him. He said vexedly:

  "Quit it! I've already been realizing how little I know about the thingswe're going to need to survive! Let me fool myself about masculinestrength, anyhow!"

  She smiled at him, a very little. But she went obediently to the fire toexperiment with cookery of the one palatable variety of fruit from thisplanet's trees. He drove himself to bring more wood than before. When hesettled down she said absorbedly:

  "Try this, Jed."

  Then she flushed hotly because she'd inadvertently used his familiarname. But she extended something that was toasted and not too muchburned. He ate, with weariness sweeping over him like a wave. The cookedfruit was almost a normal food, but it did need salt. There would betrouble finding salt on this planet. The water that should be in theseas was frozen in the glaciers. Salt would not have been leached out ofthe soil and gathered in the seas. It would be a serious problem. ButCochrane was very tired indeed.

  "I'll take the first two hours," said Babs briskly. "Then I'll wakeyou."

  He showed her how to use the weapon. He meant to let himself driftquietly off to sleep, acting as if he had a little trouble going off.But he didn't. He lay down, and the next thing he knew Babs was shakinghim violently. In the first dazed instant when he opened his eyes hethought they were surrounded by forest fire. But it wasn't that. It wasdawn, and Babs had let him sleep the whole night through, and the skywas golden-yellow from one horizon to the other. More, he heard thenow-familiar cries of creatures in the forest. But also he heard aroaring sound, very thin and far away, which could only be one thing.

  "Jed! Jed! Get up! Quick! The ship's coming back! The ship! We've got tomove!"

  She dragged him to his feet. He was suddenly wide-awake. He ran withher. He flung back his head and stared up as he ran. There was apin-point of flame and vapor almost directly overhead. It grew swiftlyin size. It plunged downward.

  They reached the surrounding forest and plunged into it. Babs stumbled,and Cochrane caught her, and they ran onward hand in hand to get clearaway from the down-blast of the rockets. The rocket-roaring grew louderand louder.

  The castaways gazed. It was the ship. From below, fierce flames poureddown, blue-white and raging. The silver hull slanted a little. Itshifted its line of descent. It came down with a peculiar deftness ofhandling that Cochrane had not realized before. Its rockets splashed,but the flame did not extend out to the edge of the clearing that hadbeen burned off at first. The rocket-flames, indeed, did not approachthe proportion to be seen on rockets on film-tape, or as Cochrane hadseen below the moon-rocket descending on Earth.

  The ship settled within yards of its original landing-place. Its rocketsdwindled, but remained burning. They dwindled again. The noise wasoutrageous, but still not the intolerable tumult of a moon-rocketlanding on Earth.

  The rockets cut off.

  The airlock door opened. Cochrane and Babs waved cheerfully from theedge of the clearing. Holden appeared in the door and shouted down:

  "Sorry to be so long coming back."

  He waved and vanished. They had, of course, to wait until the ground atleast partly cooled before the landing-sling could be used. Around themthe noises of the forest continued. There were cooling, crackling soundsfrom the ship.

  "I wonder how they found their way back!" said Babs. "I didn't thinkthey ever could. Did you?"

  "Babs," said Cochrane, "you lied to me! You said you'd wake me in twohours. But you let me sleep all night!"

  "You'd let me sleep the night before," she told him composedly. "I wasfresher than you were, and today'd have been a pretty bad one. We weregoing to try to kill some animals. You needed the rest."

  Cochrane said slowly:

  "I found out something, Babs. Why you could face things. Why we humanshaven't all gone mad. I think I've gotten the woman's viewpoint now,Babs. I like it."

  She inspected the looming blister-ports of the ship, now waiting for theground to cool so they could come aboard.

  "I think we'd have made out if the ship hadn't come," Cochrane told her."We'd have had a woman's viewpoint to wor
k from. Yours. You looked aheadto building a house. Of course you thought of finding food, but you werethinking of the possibility of winter and--building a house. You weren'tthinking only of survival. You were thinking far ahead. Women must thinkfarther ahead than men do!"

  Babs looked at him briefly, and then returned to her apparently absorbedcontemplation of the ship.

  "That's what's the matter with people back on Earth," Cochrane saidurgently. "There's no frustration as long as women can look ahead--farahead, past here and now! When women can do that, they can keep mengoing. It's when there's nothing to plan for that men can't go onbecause women can't hope. You see? You saw a city here. A little city,with separate homes. On Earth, too many people can't think of more thanliving-quarters and keeping food enough for them--them only!--coming in.They can't hope for more. And it's when that happens--You see?"

  Babs did not answer. Cochrane fumbled. He said angrily:

  "Confound it, can't you see what I'm trying to say? We'd have beenbetter off, as castaways, than back on Earth crowded and scared of ourjobs! I'm saying I'd rather stay here with you than go back to the way Iwas living before we started off on this voyage! I think the two of uscould make out under any circumstances! I don't want to try to make outwithout you! It isn't sense!" Then he scowled helplessly. "Dammit, I'vestaged plenty of shows in which a man asked a girl to marry him, andthey were all phoney. It's different, now that _I_ mean it! What's agood way to ask you to marry me?"

  Babs looked momentarily up into his face. She smiled ever so faintly.

  "They're watching us from the ports," she said. "If you want myviewpoint--If we were to wave to them that we'll be right back, we canget some more of those fruits I cooked. It might be interesting to havesome to show them."

  He scowled more deeply than before.

  "I'm sorry you feel that way. But if that's it--"

  "And on the way," said Babs. "When they're not watching, you might kissme."

  They had a considerable pile of the red-fleshed fruits ready when theground had cooled enough for them to reach the landing-sling.

  Once aboard the ship, Cochrane headed for the control-room, with Jamisonand Bell tagging after him. Bell had an argument.

  "But the volcano's calmed down--there's only a wall of steam where thelava hit the glaciers--and we could fix up a story in a couple of hours!I've got background shots! You and Babs could make the story-scenes andwe'd have a castaway story! Perfect! The first true castaway story fromthe stars--. You know what that would mean!"

  Cochrane snarled at him.

  "Try it and I'll tear you limb from limb! I've put enough of otherpeople's private lives on the screen! My own stays off! I'm not going tohave even a phoney screen-show built around Babs and me for people togabble about!"

  Bell said in an injured tone:

  "I'm only trying to do a good job! I started off on this business as awriter. I haven't had a real chance to show what I can do with this sortof material!"

  "Forget it!" Cochrane snapped again. "Stick to your cameras!"

  Jamison said hopefully:

  "You'll give me some data on plants and animals, Mr. Cochrane? Won'tyou? I'm doing a book with Bell's pictures, and--"

  "Let me alone!" raged Cochrane.

  He reached the control-room. Al, the pilot, sat at the controls with anair of special alertness.

  "You're all right? For our lined up trip, we ought to leave in abouttwenty minutes. We'll be pointing just about right then."

  "I'm all right," said Cochrane. "And you can take off when you please."To Jones he said: "How'd you find us? I didn't think it could be done."

  "Doctor Holden figured it out," said Jones. "Simple enough, but I waslost! When the ground-shocks came, everybody else ran to the ship. Wewaited for you. You didn't come." It had been, of course, becauseCochrane would not risk taking Babs through a forest in which trees werefalling. "We finally had to choose between taking off and crashing. Sowe took off."

  "That was quite right. We'd all be messed up if you hadn't," Cochranetold him.

  Jones waved his hands.

  "I didn't think we could ever find you again. We were sixty light-yearsaway when that booster effect died out. Then Doctor Holden got on thecommunicator. He got Earth. The astronomers back there located us andgave us the line to get back by. We found the planet. Even then I didn'tsee how we'd pick out the valley. But Doc had had 'em checking the shotswe transmitted as we were making our landing. We had the whole firstapproach on film-tape. They put a crowd of map-comparators to work. Wewent in a Space Platform orbit around the planet, transmitting what wesaw from out there--they figured the orbit for us, too--and they checkedwhat we transmitted against what we'd photographed going down. So theywere able to spot the exact valley and tell us where to come down. Weactually spotted this valley last night, but we couldn't land in thedark."

  Cochrane felt abashed.

  "I couldn't have done that job," he admitted, "so I didn't think anybodycould. Hm. Didn't all this cost a lot of fuel?"

  Jones actually smiled.

  "I worked out something. We don't use as much fuel as we did. We'reprobably using too much now. Al--go ahead and lift. I want to check whatthe new stuff does, anyhow. Take off!"

  The pilot threw a switch, and Jones threw another, a newly installedone, just added to his improvised control-column. A light glowedbrightly. Al pressed one button, very gently. A roaring set up outside.The ship started up. There was practically no feeling of acceleration,this time. The ship rose lightly. Even the rocket-roar was mild indeed,compared to its take-off from Luna and the sound of its first landing onthe planet just below.

  Cochrane saw the valley floors recede, and mountain-walls drop below.From all directions, then, vegetation-filled valleys flowed toward theship, and underneath. Glaciers appeared, and volcanic cones, and thenenormous stretches of white, with smoking dots here and there upon it.In seconds, it seemed, the horizon was visibly curved. In other secondsthe planet being left behind was a monstrous white ball, and there werepatches of intolerable white sunlight coming in the ports.

  And Cochrane felt queer. Jones had given the order for take-off. Joneshad determined to leave at this moment, because Jones had tests hewanted to make.... Cochrane felt like a passenger. From the man whodecided things because he was the one who knew what had to be done, hehad become something else. He had been absent two nights and part of aday, and decisions had been made in which he had no part--

  It felt queer. It felt even startling.

  "We're in a modification of the modified Dabney field now," observedJones in a gratified tone. "You know the original theory."

  "I don't," acknowledged Cochrane.

  "The field's always a pipe, a tube, a column of stressed space betweenthe field-plates," Jones reminded him. "When we landed the first time,back yonder, the tail of the ship wasn't in the field at all. The fieldstretched from the bow of the ship only, out to that last balloon wedropped. We were letting down at an angle to that line. It was like akite and a string and the kite's tail. The string was the Dabney field,and the directions we were heading was the kite's tail."

  Cochrane nodded. It occurred to him that Jones was very much unlikeDabney. Jones had discovered the Dabney field, but having sold thefame-rights to it, he now apparently thought "Dabney Field" was theproper technical term for his own discovery, even in his own mind.

  "Back on the moon," Jones went on zestfully, "I wasn't sure that a fieldonce established would hold in atmosphere. I hoped that with enoughpower I could keep it, but I wasn't sure--"

  "This doesn't mean much to me, Jones," said Cochrane. "What does it addup to?"

  "Why--the field held down into atmosphere. And we were out of theprimary field as far as the tail of the ship was concerned. But thistime we landed, I'd hooked in some ready-installed circuits. There was asecond Dabney field from the stern of the ship to the bow. There was themain one, going out to those balloons and then back to Earth. But therewas--and is--a second one only enclos
ing the ship. It's a sort ofbubble. We can still trail a field behind us, and anybody can follow inany sort of ship that's put into it. But now the ship has a completelyindependent, second field. Its tail is never outside!"

  Cochrane did not have the sort of mind to find such information eitherlucid or suggestive.

  "So what happens?"

  "We have both plates of a Dabney field always with us," said Jonestriumphantly. "We're always in a field, even landing in atmosphere, andthe ship has practically no mass even when it's letting down to landing.It has weight, but next to no mass. Didn't you notice the difference?"

  "Stupid as it may seem, I didn't," admitted Cochrane. "I haven't theleast idea what you're talking about."

  Jones looked at him patiently.

  "Now we can shoot our exhaust out of the field! The ship-field, not themain one!"

  "I'm still numb," said Cochrane. "Multiple sclerosis of the brain-cells,I suppose. Let me just take your word for it."

  Jones tried once more.

  "Try to see it! Listen! When we landed the first time we had to use alot of fuel because the tail of the ship wasn't in the Dabney field. Ithad mass. So we had to use a lot of rocket-power to slow down that mass.In the field, the ship hasn't much mass--the amount depends on thestrength of the field--but rockets depend for their thrust on the massthat's thrown away astern. Looked at that way, rockets shouldn't pushhard in a Dabney field. There oughtn't to be any gain to be had by thefield at all. You see?"

  Cochrane fumbled in his head.

  "Oh, yes. I thought of that. But there is an advantage. The ship doeswork."

  "Because," said Jones, triumphant again, "the field-effect dependspartly on temperature! The gases in the rocket-blast are hot, away up inthe thousands of degrees. They don't have normal inertia, but they dohave what you might call heat-inertia. They acquire a sort of fictitiousmass when they get hot enough. So we carry along fuel that hasn't anyinertia to speak of when it's cold, but acquires a lunatic sort ofsubstitute for inertia when it's genuinely hot. So a ship can travel ina Dabney field!"

  "I'm relieved," acknowledged Cochrane. "I thought you were about to tellme that we couldn't lift off the moon, and I was going to ask how we gothere."

  Jones smiled patiently.

  "What I'm telling you now is that we can shoot rocket-blasts out of theDabney field we make with the stern of the ship! Landing, we keep ourfuel and the ship with next to no mass, and we shoot it out to where itdoes have mass, and the effect is practically the same as if we werepushing against something solid! And so we started off with fuel formaybe five or six landings and take-offs against Earth gravity. But withthis new trick, we've got fuel for a couple of hundred!"

  "Ah!" said Cochrane mildly. "This is the first thing you've said thatmeant anything to me. Congratulations! What comes next?"

  "I thought you'd be pleased," said Jones. "What I'm really telling youis that now we've got fuel enough to reach the Milky Way."

  "Let's not," suggested Cochrane, "and say we did! You've got a new starpicked out to travel to?"

  Jones shrugged his shoulders. In him, the gesture indicated practicallyhysterical frustration. But he said:

  "Yes. Twenty-one light-years. Back on Earth they're anxious for us tocheck on sol-type suns and Earth-type planets."

  "For once," said Cochrane, "I am one with the great scientific minds.Let's go over."

  He made his way to the circular stairway leading down to the mainsaloon. On his clumsy way across the saloon floor to the communicator,he felt the peculiar sensation of the booster-current, which shouldhave been a sound, but wasn't. It was the sensation which had precededthe preposterous leap of the space-ship away from Luna, when in aheart-beat of time all stars looked like streaks of light, and the shiptraveled nearly two light-centuries.

  Sunshine blinked, and then shone again in the ports around the saloonwalls. The second shining came from a different direction--as ifsomebody had switched off one exterior light and turned on another--andat a different angle to the floor.

  Cochrane reached the communicator. He felt no weight. He strappedhimself into the chair. He switched on the vision-phone which sentradiation along the field to a balloon two hundred odd light-years fromEarth--that was the balloon near the glacier planet--and then switchedto the field traveling to a second balloon then the last hundredseventy-odd light-years back to the moon, and then from Luna City downto Earth.

  He put in his call. He got an emergency message that had been waitingfor him. Seconds later he fought his way frantically through no-weightto the control-room again.

  "Jamison! Bell!" he cried desperately. "We've got a broadcast due intwenty minutes! I lost track of time! We're sponsored on four continentsand we damwell have to put on a show! What the devil! Why didn'tsomebody--"

  Jamison said obviously from a blister-port where he swung a squatstar-telescope from one object to another:

  "Noo-o-o. That's a gas-giant. We'd be squashed if we landedthere--though that big moon looks promising. I think we'd better tryyonder."

  "Okay," said Jones in a flat voice. "Center on the next one in, Al, andwe'll toddle over."

  Cochrane felt the ship swinging in emptiness. He knew because it seemedto turn while he felt that he stayed still.

  "We've got a show to put on!" he raged. "We've got to fake something--."

  Jamison looked aside from his telescope.

  "Tell him, Bell," he said expansively.

  "I wrote a script of sorts," said Bell apologetically. "The story-line'snot so good--that's why I wanted a castaway narrative to put in it,though I wouldn't have had time, really. We spliced film and Jamisonnarrated it, and you can run it off. It's a kind of show. We ran it as aspace-platform survey of the glacier-planet, basing it on pictures wetook while we were in orbit around it. It's a sort of travelogue.Jamison did himself proud. Alicia can find the tape-can for you."

  He went back to his cameras. Cochrane saw a monstrous globe swing past acontrol-room port. It was a featureless mass of clouds, save forstriations across what must be its equator. It looked like the LunarObservatory pictures of Jupiter, back in the Sun's family of planets.

  It went past the port, and a moon swam into view. It was a very largemoon. It had at least one ice-cap--and therefore an atmosphere--andthere were mottlings of its surface which could hardly be anything butcontinents and seas.

  "We've got to put a show on!" raged Cochrane. "And now!"

  "It's all set," Bell assured him. "You can transmit it. I hope you likeit!"

  Cochrane sputtered. But there was nothing to do but transmit whateverBell and Jamison had gotten ready. He swam with nightmarelike difficultyback to the communicator. He shouted frantically for Babs. She andAlicia came. Alicia found the film-tape, and Cochrane threaded it intothe transmitter, and bitterly ran the first few feet. Babs smiled athim, and Alicia looked at him oddly. Evidently, Babs had confided theconsequence of their casting-away. But Cochrane faced an emergency. Hebegan to check timings with far-distant Earth.

  When the ship approached a second planet, Cochrane saw nothing of it. Hewas furiously monitoring the broadcast of a show in which he'd had nohand at all. From his own, professional standpoint it was terrible.Jamison spouted interminably, so Cochrane considered. Al, the pilot, wasactually interviewed by an offscreen voice! But the pictures from spacewere excellent. While the ship floated in orbit, waiting to descend topick up Babs and Cochrane, Bell had hooked his camera to an amplifyingtelescope and he did have magnificent shots of dramatic terrain on theplanet now twenty light-years behind.

  Cochrane watched the show in a mingling of jealousy and relief. It wasnot as good as he would have done. But fortunately, Bell and Jamison hadstuck fairly close to straight travelogue-stuff, and close-up shots ofvegetation and animals had been interspersed with the remoter pictureswith moderate competence, if without undue imagination. An audiencewhich had not seen many shows of the kind would be thrilled. It evenamounted to a valid change of pace. Anybody who watched this would a
tleast want to see more and different pictures from the stars.

  Halfway through, he heard the now-muffled noise of rockets. He knew theship was descending through atmosphere by the steady sound, though hehad not the faintest idea what was outside. He ground his teeth as--fortiming--he received the commercial inserted in the film. The U. S.commercials served the purpose, of course. He could not watch the otherpictures shown to residents of other than North America in thecommercial portions of the show.

  He was counting seconds to resume transmission when he felt the slightbut distant impact which meant that the ship had touched ground. A veryshort time after, even the lessened, precautionary rocket-roar cut off.

  Cochrane ground his teeth. The ship had landed on a planet he had notseen and in whose choice he had had no hand. He was humiliated. Theother members of the ship's company looked out at scenes no other humaneyes had ever beheld.

  He regarded the final commercial, inserted into the broadcast for itsAmerican sponsor. It showed, purportedly, the true story of two girlfriends, one blonde and one brunette, who were wall-flowers at allparties. They tried frantically to remedy the situation by the use ofthis toothpaste and that, and this deodorant and the other. In vain! Butthen they became the centers of all the festivities they attended, assoon as they began to wash their hair with Rayglo Shampoo.

  Holden and Johnny Simms came clattering down from the control-roomtogether. They looked excited. They plunged together toward thestair-well that would take them to the deck on which the airlock opened.

  Holden panted,

  "Jed! Creatures outside! They look like men!"

  The communicator-screen faithfully monitored the end of the commercial.Two charming girls, radiant and lovely, raised their voices in gratefulsong, hymning the virtues of Rayglo Shampoo. There followed briskreminders of the superlative, magical results obtained by those who usedRayglo Foundation Cream, Rayglo Kisspruf Lipstick, and Rayglo homepermanent--in four strengths; for normal, hard-to-wave, easy-to-wave,and children's hair.

  Cochrane heard the clanking of the airlock door.